The Days of Reflection
Day 10 – Topic Starter – Fact Finder
I’ve been thinking about some past successes. One lesson that springs to mind was when no had a challenging group that didn’t like written work in general. I tried all manner to things to get them to engage in written work but one lesson I hit the jackpot!
It was the start of a genetics topic. Genetics can be troublesome to teach as there are so many new words to learn: allele; homozygous; heterozygous; inheritance; dominant; recessive and so on. Students require an understanding of the keywords before they can construct GCSE grade responses.
So what did I Do?
I created a treasure hunt for facts! I wrote some key words and definitions on 10 post-it notes and I hid them around the room. Some were under tables or in cupboards. I asked the students to find the 10 facts or keywords. Once complete their task was to match the keywords and definitions.
This was a huge hit. When they discovered they could look anywhere they were scavenging the room for the facts. They even developed a little competition and tried not to give away the location of the post-its. Before long most of the student had a full page of writing and were trying to make sense of the new terminology, proudly boasting the phrases for the facts they had found before anyone else.
I use this activity as a topic starter for a small group. I’ve considered doing a similar activity using the whole of the school grounds but I haven’t quite worked out the logistics yet.
Let me know if you have tried this or if you have tried a